ABOUT the TOUR

Teamed up with our Australian counterpart Performing Lines, with grants from Catalyst—Australian Arts and Culture Fund, and major support from Chinese hosts and local partners, Ping Pong Productions was honored to bring 4 established Australian artists and their representative contemporary performing arts work Alter to Chinese universities and culture venues April 1-26.We toured Australian Studies Centres in 5 universities and 2 culture centers in 5 cities across China including Beijing, Xi’an, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Shanghai; reaching more than 10,000 students and audiences through performances, lectures, and artist talks.ALTER is an audio-visual installation for 16 iPads & 16 people created by acclaimed Australian performance-maker Tamara Saulwick in collaboration with Peter Knight, Martyn Coutts and Steve Berrick.

Alter China Tour is the first project that Performing Lines (Australia) and Ping Pong Productions (China) co-produced as part of the Four-Year Australia-China Performing Arts Exchange Program, an initiative designed to increase understanding of and access to contemporary, independent performing arts in each country through accessing university students and general public audiences in both first and second, third tier towns and cities.

Schedule

Date

Venue

2018/4/2

The Australian Studies Centre at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing

2018/4/3

Peking University Australian Studies Centre, Beijing

2018/4/5 - 2018/4/6

Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing

2018/4/8

The Australian Studies Centre at Xi'an International Studies University, Xi’an

2018/4/12 - 2018/4/15

Xicun Lifestyle Center, Chengdu

2018/4/18 - 2018/4/21

South China Center for Australian Studies, Nanfang College of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou

2018/4/25 - 2018/4/26

Australian Studies Centre, East China Normal University, Shanghai

RAVE REVIEWS

16 audiences interactive with iPads in their hands, generating sounds and visuals creating a hypnotic experience for the participants.

chinanews.com

Alter refers to a brand new possibility to combine performing arts and modern science, within the context of largely using of technology in artistic practice. With the disappearance of the boundary of “audience” and “performer”, the relationship between people and devices is changed in an installation about time and space.

Art News, Chinese

Watch a video about Alter Trailer

ABOUT ALTER

Repurposing the omnipresent portable device, Alter is an audio-visual installation for 16 iPads and 16 people in a delicate meditation on invisible systems and interconnectedness. Bodies, light and space are threaded together in this intimate sensory encounter.

Created by Tamara Saulwick in collaboration with Peter Knight, Martyn Coutts and Steve Berrick, Alter creates a pocket in time for the act of collective listening and contemplation.

A structured Artist Talk for the audience is arranged after performances. Two artists will share insights into their creative practice and methodology. Aspects of how the work was developed, what they were interested to explore with this work, how the technology works, and some of the challenges with working with technology in this way will be fully discussed.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

ABOUT TAMARA SAULWICK

Contemporary Performance Works Creator
Independent Artist

Tamara Saulwick is a performance-maker working across and between art forms who creates contemporary performance works for theatres and public spaces. With over twenty year’s experience, Tamara has presented her work nationally and internationally. Tamara’s work Endings premiered in the 2015 Sydney Festival and was subsequently presented at Arts House. Nominated for the ‘Best New Australian Work’ Helpmann Award and two Green Room awards, Endings has toured to the UK, Ireland, Canada and US. Other works include the Green Room Award winning Pin Drop, audio walk Seddon Archives, and audio led performance work PUBLIC . Tamara was commissioned by Arts House to create audio/visual installation work, Alter and audio walk Newport Archives (Substation 2016). In 2017 Tamara was appointed Artistic Director of Chamber Made.

Interview with Tamara Saulwick about the development of Alter

Tamara’s other works include her site-specific Seddon Archives commissioned by the Big West Festival (2011), Imprint (2005) and Map Folding for Beginners (2001). Permission To Speak (2016),Newport Archives (2016).

CREDITS

Concept/creation/visuals: Tamara Saulwick

COMPOSITION: PETER KNIGHT

Composer, trumpeter, sound artist

Australian trumpeter/composer/sound artist, Peter Knight, is a multidisciplinary musician who has gained wide acclaim for his distinctive approach, which integrates jazz, experimental, and world music traditions. Peter’s work as both performer and composer is regularly featured in a range of ensemble settings, he also composes for theatre, creates sound installations, and is the Artistic Director of one of Australia’s leading contemporary music ensembles, the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO).

DRAMATURGY: MARTYN COUTTS

Theatre and Performance
Works mainly in Live Art

Martyn Coutts is an interdisciplinary artist based in Australia with a postgraduate degree from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. The work he creates expands across theatre making, dance dramaturgy, video design and festival curation. His interest is in the live body in action, its relationship to technology and to its observer. His work has been shown extensively throughout Australia and has engaged strongly with the Asia-Pacific, having shown work in Taiwan, China, Korea and New Zealand.

SYSTEM DESIGN: STEVE BERRICK

Artist
Creative Coder

Steve Berrick is an artist and creative coder. His works are software driven experiences for interactive systems and performance; sometimes visual; sometimes aural; sometimes informative. He enjoys process, collaboration and presenting projects to audiences in galleries, theatres, museums and the street. Steve is an artist with the Ololo art collective, Graffiti Research Lab Perth and pvi collective. His works: My Robot, Hello Future Self, The Automobile Lab, etc.

Thanks To Our Generous Supporters

Acknowledgement:
Alter was commissioned as part of In Your Hands – a new series of art works and installations that invite audiences to create experiences mediated through hand-held technology. In Your Hands was commissioned by Arts House through the Australia Council ͛s New Digital Theatre Initiative.

This project has been assisted by the Australian government through the Department of Communication and the Arts’ Catalyst—Australian Arts and Culture Fund'.